Billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk accused Reuters of lying after the outlet reported on Friday that Tesla scrapped its plans to make low-cost electric vehicles and will focus on developing robo-taxis.
Reuters, which cited multiple anonymous sources and “company messages,” wrote that Tesla was abandoning its promise to begin producing cheaper EVs as soon as 2025. After the report was published, Tesla’s stock dropped by as much as 6.2% before it began to make a small climb back toward where it opened on Friday just shy of $170 per share.
“Reuters is lying (again),” Musk said in reply to a post on his social media platform X.
Reuters is lying (again)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2024
Later, Musk reposted a chart showing the decrease in Reuters’ monthly and yearly website traffic.
“Reuters is dying,” the Tesla owner wrote.
Since as far back as 2018, billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk has said the company would move into making “a $25,000 car,” which has been called the Model 2. In January, the billionaire entrepreneur added that his company was “very far along” in making an affordable car, Bloomberg reported. Currently, Tesla’s cheapest vehicle, the Model 3, retails for nearly $40,000 in the U.S. while other EVs in its lineup can cost up to $150,000.
Reuters wrote that “Two sources said they learned of Tesla’s decision to scrap the Model 2 in a meeting attended by scores of employees, with one of them saying the gathering happened in late February.”
“Elon’s directive is to go all in on robotaxi,” one person said, according to the outlet.
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Other car companies, such as Ford and GM, have recently scaled back or delayed their plans to produce more EVs as consumer demand has failed to meet expectations while the Biden administration continues to push Americans to move away from gas-powered cars.
After the Reuters report, Musk also responded with the eyes emoji — often used to draw attention to something — under a post that laid out a potential explanation for the story.
“Elon just said Reuters was lying. However, here is my general thinking. Tesla’s low-cost $25k car and the Robotaxi were always going to be based on the same platform. They were going to be very similar, but the $25k version was going to have a steering wheel,” wrote Sawyer Merritt, a co-founder of an apparel company.
“Maybe Elon and the team have been so impressed with how good FSD 12 has performed and were maybe thinking they should be shifting even more resources to the Robotaxi/FSD effort,” Merritt added. “This doesn’t mean the $25k car is canceled. Again, they share the same platform.”
👀
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2024